Do privacy seals in e-commerce really work?

The potential impact of privacy seals on the US e-commerce industry's safety and reliability is discussed. The e-commerce industry introduced a self-regulatory policy that focused on the use of privacy seals for ensuring its safety. The seal was introduced to increase confidence in e-commerce transactions by verifying that the Web site had a policy for monitoring its collection and use of personally identifiable information. The three main privacy seals, such as TRUSTe, WebTrust, and BBBOnline had adopted a set of data privacy principles and made efforts to ensure compliance by recipient Web sites. Legislations needed to be introduced to encourage more Web sites to use privacy seals to ensure privacy of their customers and safety of their transactions. These measures were also expected to help the e-commerce industry overcome the challenges of online frauds.